A Tale of Two Lances
by TayteFFN
Summary: Post-FE7. The Lawliet Road, a winding snow-mountain pass, is the primary source of trade for Ilia. It supplies the bounties of Lycia to ford Ilia through the winter. In the year 985, the caravan didn't make it to Ilia. Pegasus Knight Allison chases after Legault, the man who triggered the avalanche that started civil war.


**A/N:** **This is not a romance between Fiora and Sain. And y** **es, I have read Shadows Under the Oak Tree. Now here's a different Ilia. Huzzah!**

* * *

 **A Tale of Two Lances**

 **By Tayte**

 **Chapter 1: Lawliet Road**

 _Believe me, I'm sorry you'll be the one to start it all, but I was really worried it was going to have to be Fiora._ _~Legault_

* * *

If the pegasus knights were Ilia's aorta, Lawliet Road would be the country's vena cava. A winding mountain pass six miles in length, the Lawliet held Lycia fast to the winter nation. Constant Ilian surveillance of the pass made it impossible for bandit raids. The winds would buffet many a careless girl from her airborne seat to the yawning valleys below, but the other Ilian knights, faced with a meaner fate, began their bloody careers feasting their eyes upon the physical manifestation of their purpose: food.

The Lawliet provided the largest source of subsistence to the three eastern states of the Ilian Union: Ragnar, Rearden and the northernmost Anconia. The mid-September caravan alone consisted of fourteen hundred carts and merchant wagons from as far east as Pherae and as far west as the southern tips of Etruria. This was the final dependable deliverance, and it seemed there was little else Ilia could do but depend. A potato famine in Khathelet meant a potato famine in Anconia. Civil war in Caelin? No wheat for Rearden. Though Ilia might sow its blood in the fields of Laus, it could only beg the return of a meager surplus. There were very few who knew better than Ilians that there could always be a greater state of poverty: the poverty of one meal a day; the poverty of no meals some days; the poverty of neighborhood cats disappearing and small children asking if they could eat bark off the trees like pegasi foals do.

In the year of 985, the caravan did not make it to Ilia.

* * *

He was almost as bad for wear as the day he'd been speared back in Ostia. It was clear his detectors decided to punish him themselves, given the bruises across his face, the drying blood atop his lip, the shredded cloak (or was it always that way?), the way he couldn't sit upright and unconsciously bent forward in an attempt to lessen some pain. He had been thrown into the same cell as a furious young pickpocket from Tania and a bearded man who didn't entirely seem to know where he was nor why he was there.

Fiora had been standing outside his cell for several minutes, watching his head rise and sink with sleep. He was breathing hard, his legs drawn up for support, arms resting on his knees, hands covering the back of his head protectively. He had cut his hair shorter and tied it and left it hanging over one shoulder the way Lord Pent did. _Lord Pent…_ She was grateful for the scathing glare the Tanian pickpocket was giving her. She deserved it. Lord Pent, Lord Pent, Lord Pent—how could she keep having such improper thoughts? It had been five years since she saw him last. Enough already!

"Legault."

He didn't move. Fiora reminded herself not to run her hand through her hair again. The prison guard had remained at her side the entire time, properly unassuming in his outward appearances, not asking why she stood with her hand clamped tightly around one bar of the cell as if _she_ were the prisoner. Several harmless beetles made themselves at home at one corner of Legault's cell, but other than that, the only unwanted element in the cells—other than the prisoners themselves, of course—was the stink of sweat.

The Lawliet Council kept this prison for troublemakers on the road, deep within the high crowns of the mountains, unreachable except through air, and well-kept to prevent disease. The Ilians respected the power of contagions, especially considering the high concentrations of people as were found in the Lawliet—and considering the far-reaching pegasus knights themselves.

Fiora felt as if her lungs had shriveled away of her inside from some strange cold she had felt when a messenger had made her aware of the newest addition to the prison. The Lawliet Council's verdict was the loss of his hand; he appealed to her to save it, to save him. She almost laughed at the insanity: Fiora was called on to save the hand of a petty thief acquaintance. Then the cold: she had been wondering when there might be a reunion for Eliwood's Elite. It had been five years since it disbanded, and—though she never allowed herself to admit it—she longed for the day she could see Geitz, Sir Kent, Lord Pent, Lord Eliwood, her sisters, even Sain, that mongrel, all together again. Probably never, who could ever arrange such a time? Maybe it was better that way. The job was done, they were not needed—why should they reunite?

And hence her breath came out shivering and weak as she regarded the man. But this couldn't go on forever. There was a new batch of pegasus trainees reporting in an hour; she had to be there. If she could only steel herself, just free him, slap a stern warning across his face and be done with it, and that would be that. Or, why not, off with his hand, off with his hand, why not just let him suffer for the crime regarded as the worst in Ilia? Say nothing, leave, then hear nothing about it.

No. He was an Elite. Lord Eliwood had placed some trust in him. By Set, where did he find _that_ faith?

"Legault." It came out stronger this time. Or maybe the first time the sound didn't even form on her lips.

He lifted his head, alert as a wounded animal, and he somehow produced that jaded smile of his when he saw her. For a flash of a moment she wished then that she hadn't called him, that he hadn't awoken and locked his piercing eyes—the same shade as Lord Pent's—with hers.

"Well, this is a surprise," Legault said, remaining seated until he saw cause to stand. "Should I say something about being honored by your presence here, Dame Fiora?"

"There is only one Dame in Ilia," Fiora corrected him and motioned for the guard with her to open the door. "I know it is encouraged in other nations to address a woman by 'dame,' but here in Ilia only the supreme leader is so addressed."

"I know." Legault rose to his feet painfully, holding his breath a little as he grasped for the wall.

"What are you doing here?" Fiora asked.

Legault nodded to the guard and saluted his cell-mates as he stepped out and followed her stride for stride, the twitching of his eye the only crack to the facade he erected to hide the pain. "Supposedly serving five days for snatching a golden necklace." No mention of the true punishment, his hand, tucked deep in the pockets of his trousers. "But I found out the necklace was fake by the time I was caught. What a waste of time…"

"How did you find out?"

Legault glanced at her as he hesitated for a moment at the staircase the ended the narrow hall, the only passage in and out of the prisons. "This isn't for the ears of ladies, but I'll have you know this brand of fake gold changed color in the presence of acid."

Fiora's face burned hot enough to completely miss the chill Legault shuddered from when they stepped into the sullen air, the hood of the dank ceiling replaced by the bleak blue hood of the sky. Though there were no clouds settled in it, yet the sun was nowhere to be found.

"Oh well," he said with a shrug in his voice as he surveyed the line of purple mountains in the distance. "Least I got the bastard in return. He was the big one with the violet cap, in the other cell right across. Did you see him?"

She replied with an irritated "No." Unsure what to do next, she turned on him and said again, " _Why_ are you here?"

He didn't answer at first, simply stuffed his hands in another two of his numerous pockets and sighed, smiling at the puff of breath curling and vanishing. He did it again, chuckled, and finally said, "A favor to an old friend of mine. I hadn't seen him in years. _Decades._ " He looked at her again with a cocked brow. "Standing next to you, now, I'm feeling like an old man. I even need this cloak not to be shaking as I stand here. Pretty bad for an Ilian-born, don't you think?"

"You are from Ilia?"

Legault nodded. "'Til I was fourteen. I was the second oldest. Realized my parents couldn't make it through that winter with that many mouths to feed. So I made it easier for them. I left. But anyway, 'Commander,' did that guard just say?"

Fiora cautiously nodded.

There was some look of dissatisfaction in his face. He looked away. "I'm sorry."

"What?"

"To have to bother you."

Fiora did not know what to make of it. After another moment of silence, Legault said, "Well, unless you have anything to say to me, I guess I'll get going."

Fiora glared at him. "There _is_ something, Master Legault. From one Ilian to another."

Although it was his head flung aside with the impact of the slap, it was Fiora who drew in a sharp icy breath. That was only in her thoughts—that she would slap him! When had it truly become her intention?

She opened her mouth to repair the damage, to undo what she could not, to give voice to her own confusion, but whatever she had meant to say died in her throat, for Legault had dared to meet her eyes again. Her abdomen grew hollow with sudden fear, not for what she saw in his eyes, but for what was not there.

She indicated where the carrier pegasus stables were, turned her back on him, and rejoined the attendant holding the reins of her pegasus.

There had been no anger in his eyes. No reproach. No shock. Only acceptance.

Why?

* * *

"You've stopped speaking."

The woman Fiora spoke to had in fact stopped speaking a full minute ago. The woman had found the commander just departing the courier stations, where a merchant was haranguing anyone who wasn't lucky enough to escape on a pegasus on the importance of delivering his perishables on time. As if the girls needed reminding. Leading Fiora to a side road where shouting was no longer a necessity, the woman announced the successful arrival of the batch of newly-graduated Ilian trainees, all of whom had worked years to finally meet their first commander the next morning.

Fiora sent the lieutenant a cursory glance to affirm the attention she wasn't giving. There was too much on her mind. She now held a neatly rolled parchment bearing the red embossment of the considered-dead Caelin. Why the delay when Florina had been so close for _months_?

"You had your mind on other things, Commander," replied the woman, standing at attention. "I didn't want you to lose your train of thought." She looked to be in her mid-twenties, with her lilac hair bound tightly with the blue and gold ribbon of her home state, Dagny, and a double belt with the three-pointed star of a Host of the Fledglings adorning her waist. Fiora realized this was the first time she had encountered a host since she herself had been a fledgling, to be delivered from the training academy to her first training post.

"You seem happy," said the host.

Fiora blushed. She had let her emotions supersede her duty…but when she reconsidered, she felt no guilt. "It is my sister," she explained, holding up the letter with the Lycian seal. "I have just received news that she is married. It has been five years since I had first seen Florina and Kent together, and even then I knew this would be so, but…five years to make formal their happiness?" Fiora shook her head. "Now I am just remembering what satisfaction feels like."

The host smiled and looked at the people filing in and out of the courier station. "What a pleasure to worry about things of that nature."

"And so easy to forget that it _is_ one, no?"

The host laughed silently as Fiora studied the woman. Her fingers were interlaced in front of her as if she were cradling a wallet full only of copper coins, but her eyes were bright with the tenacity she would use to protect them anyway.

Fiora cleared her throat. "I know you had given me your name only a moment before—"

"Allison," said the host, understanding. "Ishitani."

"From where in Dagny? I myself am from Silba."

"Edi. The village north of the House of Gant."

"I see. I had actually been notified of your delivery of the new batch of trainees this morning." Fiora frowned now. "But you are a little late."

Allison looked the commander in the eye and said, "That is why I came to see you in person. Congratulations on your post as Commander, by the way. I pray to bring you happier news when next we meet."

Fiora nodded. "What happened?"

"One of the trainees had become violently ill from an infection she had incurred from a wound during sparring practice back at the academy. We had to deliver the girl's body to her family in a village on the way here. I request you please consider this before you address them tomorrow."

"Of course. " Fiora nodded, then after a moment asked: "How is the future of Ilia?" She meant what were the new trainees were bringing to the forces of Ilia.

Allison looked away. "Every other time I had been asked this question over the last six years, I had been able to say eagerness…excitement…spirit…dreams… This is not one such batch. They have already suffered a grave loss within their own ranks and they have not even faced the perils of the continent, and the circumstances have made them closer than happy days could make them ever. These girls are scared, Commander." Allison turned to Fiora. "They are scared but they are armed, with a healthy dose of caution, better prepared than any other batch I have delivered thus far. They are learning to harden their hearts already, and will survive whatever is to befall them. They may be the greatest generation I will encounter in my time as host, and I would recommend you put your trust in them. These girls will not disappoint."

"Thank you. I will keep that in mind." Fiora nodded, not knowing that she would never be leading those girls. "Ah…I am reminded of how new I am to this role…how every role brings something new with it. Thank you for your support, Host Ishitani."

Allison saluted. "You know where to find me if you need me. I'll be seeing you again, then."

"You will."

Allison nodded and vanished into a stream of horses, errand boys, and the steady snow of pegasus feathers. Fiora ran her hands up her arms to fend off a sudden chill and sighed.

"The greatest generation…"

She regarded the road teeming with travelers, craftsmen, acting troupes, traders and their carts and the oxen struggling uphill, stopping at a rest station on the other side of the valley. There was a system for keeping the road clean of both human and animal waste, with periodic rest stations where the humans relieved themselves in latrines, and a team of Ilian boys wit scraping shovels and carts to allocate animal waste to other, more frequent, service stations. There was no glory in it, but Ilians took pride in practicality: for example, the ingenious practicality of the carved, discrete, downhill aqueducts from glaciers atop the mountains on the eastern side of the pass.

Yet there were many forms of waste in the world. With strangers coming in and out of the pass at all times to be squeezed with a mass of people found only in cities, trouble was constantly brewing and people were constantly demanding punishment as if they were the only people to suffer theft, broken wheels, broken hearts, broken pride. Five years and six promotions made her the commander of the fleet of pegasus knights patrolling the Lawliet during its busiest time of year. Guild rivalries had not been something Fiora took seriously before now. She suspected half the missing nonexistent hammers and imagined furtive exchange of glances that were grating on the nerves of the new pegasus recruits were submitted by someone who was the cause of another's complaints. Why the merchants insisted on bringing their wives, their sons, their daughters, their toddlers, their lizards and their dead mothers' jewelry was something Fiora did not want to comprehend. Why not bring the whole house on a cart, and invite the neighbors as well?

And this was what the greatest generation would have to face for the coming months, though Fiora did not know it. The little things were wearying. Waking up to face red-faced men with high-pitched voices was wearying. Welcoming new batches of girls who were departing to shatter their dreams against the world—no, these were already shattered—was wearying. But what else was there? What more could she ask for? She was four steps from becoming a General, one of six pegasus knights that oversaw the deployment of the entirety of Ilia's pegasus knights, one from each state and a First General supreme to all. She was deployed in a place with neither combat nor threat to her life, the most violent situations being mere scuffles. She was delegated the honored task of ensuring the peace of the most direct—and least blood-stained—food supply to her people. She was doing so well Farina felt fiscally safe enough—Farina!—to depart from knighthood and run off with Dart in search of treasure. (This was Fiora's justification for it. The alternative was that her sister was insane.)

What else could Fiora want?

Again, a ripple of shame coursed through her body.

" _I know it is not much, but we travel lightly these days,"_ Lord Pent had said when he handed her the necklace. _"Sell it, take the gold it brings you and give it to the families of your fallen friends."_ How long… How long had she kept that piece in her satchel? Black onyx, the width of her pointer and middle finger, boldly placed on an inch-wide band of twenty-four carat gold! Were it not for Florina, who screamed upon seeing it when she'd been looking for a vulnerary for Sain's head-wound, when would she have sold it?

She bit the insides of her cheeks until she thought she would bleed as she turned away from humanity and looked instead at the cold sky. The only thing that rang through her mind that evening: _Filla and Set, it wasn't Farina. Thank you thank you thank you it wasn't Farina. Thank you thank you thank you…_ If Farina had found that jewel, she would have asked questions. Where did she get it? When? Why? Why hadn't she sold it? And if anyone had found out…Jill's sisters, Ilyana's parents and two brothers, Mist's lame grandfather, Mia's husband, oh, if any of them knew! Fiora deserved little more than to be spit upon. Her hometown's children would flock to her to rub the soles of their shoes on her skin, to jeer—oh Set, if only the world never found out!

" _A messenger?"_ Her heart had crashed into her skull and crushed her brain when Lord Pent had proposed keeping her in his service. It was the day of Lord Hector's coronation, and Lady Louise had been standing at Lord Pent's side and smiling welcomingly, lovely in her gown. What did Fiora say to him? How did he…she didn't remember saying anything to him. How did he take her refusal? Oh yes, the startled look on Lady Louise's face, and _"Fiora, are you unwell?"_

 _It doesn't matter._ Fiora trudged her way up the side road to the courier stations stables again, to re-saddle a soon-to-be ill-tempered Merlin, her pegasus. _It doesn't matter if I am well or dead._

* * *

Legault rubbed his hands vigorously. The icy air stung his lungs and seemed to reach from his jaws to prick at his ears, but by now he had gotten used to that at least. He looked at his handiwork with a great relief and stamped on the snow, stamped death onto a girl buried a foot below. The only thing he saw of her was from a hole around her face, like a halo. But instead of her face, there was a mass of indigo tangles. He didn't want to see her face. The only part of her face he saw were the two lips protruding out.

"This is going to happen a lot faster than I thought," he told her as he scanned the skies again. No pegasus knights patrolling the area, considering the only other people who could arrive to this place were also on pegasi—unless Bern attacked, but that wasn't a likely scenario. His intel had been correct.

"I mean, getting caught stealing got me up here faster than I had hoped," he explained to the unconscious girl buried in the snow. "Guess this really is a place where thieves come to die. But too bad about that necklace, eh?" He ran a hand down the front of his chest, considering how much time he had left. "Believe me, I'm sorry you'll be the one to start it all, but…" He heaved a great sigh of relief. "I was really worried it was going to have to be Fiora. I knew she would trust me, but I didn't expect she would trust me enough to turn her back and leave without even securing me directly into the hands of the carrier knights… You poor little attendant, she just left me in your hands. How were you to know I knew how to stash a knife where the sun doesn't shine? Who could have prepared you for _that_?"

He kneeled at the hole in the snow and said, "Would you hold on a moment? I feel a bout of cough coming on."

Reaching into his mouth, he pulled out a dark pill he had tucked into a hole in place of a back tooth he had lost in Ostia his teeth. He regarded it for a moment, then crushed it with his teeth. The effects were instantaneous. The putrid taste had him heaving painfully—there were two broken ribs, after all—but there was no food to come out. Instead, a small steel capsule, a fat cylinder an inch wide and half an inch deep, dropped into the palm of his hands. He wiped his mouth.

"I think I could do you some courtesy in exchange for your services," he said, sticking the steel capsule into the snow to clean it. "So, you said you'd keep this warm for me? Well, you didn't quite _say_ it, but I appreciate the offer. Ah, sorry if it makes you a little uncomfortable." He opened her mouth and slipped the disk inside, lodged inside her teeth. "Now then, I can't have you screaming either." He began to brush the snow around him over the hole. "Don't worry, I'm sending you to Heaven. And if you hate me, just know that you won't ever see me again, okay?"

He stamped on the snow again, then took several steps down the snow bank and stopped, picked up a handful of snow and crunched into it to wipe away the taste of the dark pill as he muttered to himself. "Thirteen more to go."

* * *

Allison swung towards the Micaiah Mountain, where the peak was lit as vigilant signal that all was well at the prisons. At this point, some of the peaks of the black mountains rose high enough to be kissed with snow, like the lips of a million stars descended from the heavens and frozen against the rock. Banking on the snow, she drew in a stabbing, head-clearing breath and coughed. Her people weren't completely impervious to the cold, thick-skinned as they were. Allison dismounted and stamped upon the snow to warm herself. This was the only place she could think now.

It _was_ him. Legault. She had only been five at the time, but who could forget that scar on his face? The youth who had pulled her father, Jenoah, out of the ice. The scar was Thor's revenge, he had supposedly said when old Neimi had stitched together his face. It was the Ilian death god's final say.

When Allison first saw him four hours ago, she had thought his hair had turned white with age, but that wasn't possible—he was younger than her father. No, it was a versatile violet that just looked wrong in the shadows. They were kicking in his stomach, the trader from Tania and his two younger brothers. It wasn't something she wanted the trainees to see, but it was something they needed to learn to deal with, so she had stepped in with an armada of forty-four lance-bearing knights-to-be. When she realized who she had rescued, she secured the man and the trader onto carrier pegasi—a naturally blind species that accepted male riders—to escort them directly to the station of the Lawliet Council three miles down the mountain, conveniently right along the way to the East Barracks where the trainees were to be delivered anyway. Legault didn't recognize her. She didn't introduce herself for his shame. Of all the crimes in Ilia, the greatest was theft. Always theft.

She wished she did introduce herself. She wished she could have slapped him, what a man he was!—Brought so low? _How_? That was all she needed to know. The young man her father revered so much as to offer him her older sister Alberta, so much so as to send her to him in Bern. And now she felt as if he had stolen her sister too.

 _Where is Alberta?_ The thought had first struck her the moment she left the new Commander of the Lawliet. " _I found him."_ That was her sister's last letter, five years ago. There was nothing else. Not even a signature. Just three words. Was this why there was no more word from Alberta? The shame? Of what he had become? Was this what he had been for the last…more than six years? Why didn't Alberta return?

"Just wait a little longer," Jenoah had said. Allison always hated it when her father said that. When he asked for patience, something had gone wrong. But there was nothing to do but obey her father and keep working for the Ilian Union so she could save money to get a doctor for her other sister, Amy. "Just wait a little longer." Two years later, Alberta had been officially classified missing by the Ilian Union's deployment records, but still, "A little longer, a little longer." It was a stubborn chant when she returned from duty three years after the last letter. By then he was a darker man, his oldest daughter missing, one youngest in service, his middle daughter ill and his wife ashes in the wind.

Allison looked up the path to the prisons, where torches beat at the dark and the cold with some fiery desperation. All that she could see rising out of the ground was basically a little hut with two torches at the entrance, easily missed, for the entirety of the prison was underground, equipped with geothermal ventilation and heat. Did he… Did he lose his hand yet? How long would he last without it? Those who resorted to theft most often had nothing else they could have done to sustain themselves to begin with, but in Ilia, the only people to steal from were the others with hardly anything more.

After several steps toward the hut, she stopped. She had the Blue Banner, the javelin serving as a flag-staff to the Ilian Union's flag, to mark her a knight in direct deployment of Ilia. Her black uniform marked her a messenger (versus the white uniforms of loaned mercenaries), the double-belt a Host of the Fledglings. None of these granted her the authority to chat with prisoners. She shook her head and labored up the path anyway. From one Ilian to another, nobody got in the way of finding one's sister.

* * *

The guard Allison was met with was a stoic man with hard-lined jaws and large eyes that seemed to absorb everything: light, tension, desperation. He shook his head when she asked to see the thief.

"He's not here."

"What? But I brought him here only today—"

"He was released."

"By _who_?"

"That I cannot say."

They stood in the prison guard's office, the first room to be passed for access the cells. Until seventeen hours ago, no one who did not belong had made it through the room.

"Where could I find him?" asked Allison.

"I cannot say."

"Which carrier knight took him back?"

"I cannot say."

"How did he circumvent his punishment?"

"I cannot say. My apologies, but the matter is that I do not know."

Allison felt a surge of anger boiling through her veins. "How can you not know? These things should be on record, shouldn't—" Her voice broke. It must have been off the record. How could she possibly find him now, on the Lawliet Road, he could be _anywhere_! She clenched her fists to counteract the burning at her throat and shook her head. "Just—never mind."

* * *

Out in the cold again, she glanced up at the waning moon that haunted the sky like a ghost. Her footsteps crunched in the snow as she walked down towards the stables. She hadn't spent this much time thinking about Alberta in years. She had taught herself how to do that. But no number of years could not dull the yearning to know what had happened. She couldn't even see her sister's face as a whole anymore. If she concentrated, she could glimpse Alberta's eyes, brighter than her own, always more alive than her own. The crescent of Alberta's close-lipped smile, the way it lined up with her chin. The chipped tooth right in the front would only show when someone could prod her sister enough to laugh; Allison was always astonished at how much embarrassment the chipped tooth caused Alberta.

Allison stopped walking. Turning her back on the exposing moon, she instead watched her own blurry shadow quake as she fought to keep silent. If she didn't wipe her nose fast enough, her nostrils would be frozen shut in this cold. For a moment, she swayed on her feet and held her head to steady herself, biting her tongue harder and harder until the pain of her tongue outmatched the pain in her heart. She'd never considered the fact that she would never see Alberta again, or—what if she didn't recognize her?

Why start thinking these things now?

A moan wrangled itself out of her throat and burst in her ears as if the whole world were crying with her, a blast of wind knocking her to her knees. A spray of snow slapped her back and another scream exploded in her ears. She didn't have the strength to scream like that. There was another scream. Another. Behind her, geysers of snow and ice rocketed into the sky with each scream, lancing up as if to pierce the sky and coming down again in volcanic arcs. A chunk of sharp ice sliced through the forearms Allison protectively raised over her head as her ears developed a constant ringing. She could no longer hear the screams but counted the geysers that ran down the snow bank—seven, eight, nine—the first geyser had sprayed blood all over Allison. That couldn't be her blood, could it? Could she bleed that _much_?

She felt the world sliding from underneath her and moved to regain her footing. But she was already standing. The stars above her were flying up and the crests of the mountains, the sitting white sentinels, grew taller and seemed to rise up to stand. And the world _was_ sliding underneath her. Below her, boulders of snow and ice cracked apart. Like a hammer taken to a glass marvel, the white shoulders of Micaiah Mountain shattered into a torrent of rock, ice and snow rolling and tumbling down. Now she could hear again, the heavy roar echoed off the shoulder of other mountains, the earth's guttural shriek of pain frozen in time but sounding forever.

Allison's fingers were suddenly grappling onto the snow when she felt her world flip. She couldn't feel her legs. She'd never felt this heavy, as if someone loaded her blood with lead. The stars weren't supposed to be underneath her. Her fingers were hot; she was bleeding, bleeding and watching the world fall from underneath her, falling faster than she could fall. The boulder she had been standing on was now in the distance below her, small enough to match the size of her big toe before it slipped over the edge of the naked black rock remaining.

She was telling herself to breathe, wishing the thrashing in her chest would cooperate and match her efforts—her heart. That was her heart beating wildly in there, as if set free from all correlation with her lungs. She had one leg braced against a narrow shelf of rock, the knee scraped raw, the other foot over air, unable to find some solid place to be. Her fingers had dug inch-deep gashes into the snow. Claws would help, she thought for a second before countering that her claws would have been ripped off already and left her in greater pain.

And then she laughed at the absurdity of her existence. This was not in her training manual. This was not the death she had signed up for. As a Host of the Fledglings, she had sunk into the comfort of only traversing Ilia's safe havens with children who still dreamed of big things. Wonderful things. Things that extended beyond getting home one more time and apologizing to one's mother for that horrible argument. Beyond sharing cranberry pie with one's cousins one last time—who else could teach how to make that crust properly? Beyond holding a loved one in two arms heavy with the weight of lances and blood. But still, her last moments she'd spend clinging to a _rock_? The ideal death, though her mother sternly reprimanded there was no such thing, was either with a javelin in hand, or the affirmation that last month's payment had been sent home already. She had neither because she was clinging to a rock.

She rested her forehead against the snow, rocking her head against it. This couldn't be it. She hadn't found Alberta yet. She hadn't beaten her in a single card game—Alberta was the one who taught her to cheat, after all. And she hadn't taken Amy to the doctor yet. She'd given up the dream that she herself would become Amy's doctor the day she was made the breadwinner of the family the day the Union declared Alberta missing, but she hadn't taken Amy to the doctor yet. And she hadn't seen Jasper, the fiancé she had given up, and his new wife, or his children Thito, Tate and Thany, like she promised she would. She hadn't seen off her twenty-fourth pegasus knighting ceremony—tomorrow, no, today by the look of the bleeding horizons—when she would officially have hosted over a thousand pegasus knights into their knighthood. She hadn't—she hadn't done anything yet!

She looked down at the void beyond her legs. If she could have gotten a proper view of Micaiah Mountain now, she would have thought someone had decapitated it. The entire snow peak had dropped away and landed almost in graceful silence, for the roar of the tumbling had ended so quickly.

She felt her fingers freezing in place. Her leg…she needed to shift her weight, but she couldn't place her other foot on that foothold. Could she risk a hop and possibly stand to fall off the face of the world, her fingers ripped out and—

She feltthe coolness of the shadow move across her more than saw it. She looked up. The sky was filling with loose pegasi, panicked and cutting erratically through the sky. The carrier pegasi from the stables at the prison—they too had collapsed in the avalanche? The blind pegasi roved in circles, shrieking calls to each other in some attempt at navigation, unable to hear the replies of the natural leader pegasi, the warriors the pegasus knights rode. Only more panicked squeals from other blind fellows. A younger pegasus who had not yet developed its echolocation skills crashed into a rock ledge and dropped into the abyss. They were so pitifully helpless!

"HOOOOY!" she called. The flock of pegasi went silent. "HOOOOOOOY!" she called again.

She was safe. They were safe. She could make it. She just needed one to come closer. She watched them crane their necks in her direction and fly closer, closer, their shadows racing up the black walls underneath her, and then the whistle blew. Instantly, the carrier pegasi aligned into a square formation, neighing to each other to locate their brethren, and flew over her head in answer to a prison guard's commands.

"No—no. No!" She drew in her breath and poured what remained of her energy in her calls. No pegasi turned back for her. She rested her head on the slivers of snow she had locked her fingers into. Sheer rock for forty feet below her…she couldn't tell how far the snow went up…the pinking clouds above gliding carelessly by… Her tears freezing her face against the snow wall…the sound of beats…wing beats… She couldn't turn her face to see it.

There was a strange rumbling in her throat. A silent, hysterical laughter. Now her savior comes! And her face is stuck to a wall! Her face was shaking so much with the laughter she felt the strain on the skin of her cheeks, the burning ice that threatened to rip it away. She called unintelligibly to the last pegasus, the young one who had crashed into the ledge and fallen.

"Here, here, hooooy," she called and laughed. The beating of the wings was nearer now, and steady, and stationary. "Do you—ha ha—do you know what I ha-have to do now, pegasus? Ha ha ha ha, I…I have to cry some more. To melt the ice on my cheeks or else fasten myself harder—I don't know…" and she collapsed into another fit again, grinding her teeth against the tearing at her cheeks. "Cry… Sad thoughts, sad thoughts… She's dead. Alberta's dead and Amy's dying…ha hahahaaaa…. Hah…" There was a twisting in her stomach. She couldn't do this. She had tear her face off if needed but…but… Was the pegasus behind her? Where was he?

She felt it, the brush of feathers. The pegasus was unsure how to approach her. Its erratic wing beats hinted an injury, she wasn't an expert in this, but it was there…behind her…now all she had left…was one conclusive movement… One chance to pull away from the snow, to pull out her hands from where they had stuck fast, to leap from the ledge, backwards, onto a pegasus she could not see…

"It is my hour of need," she prayed, clamping shut her eyes, wondering if her sister had breathed these words yet. "And I do entrust myself to the graces of my gods." She gathered the last reserves of her strength, the last reserves of her mother's strength, of her grandmothers' blood. "Filla, infuse in me your might and your power." She opened her eyes again and glared at the white walls that dominated her sight. "Set, your litheness and your grace." She wiggled her fingers, knew they were blue and felt nothing. "Thor, your vengeance unto the undeniable death that takes us all…" A rock skittered from the ledge she stood upon. "Let me die another day!"

Molten iron bloomed over her left cheek and slithered down, burning, to her lips, hot, salty, fresh and stinging as the sudden cold wind. The white walls faded out of sight and there were the dark gray plumes of feathers, the gray bar she could only command her unfeeling hands to reach out for. In reflex to her sudden weight on his left, she felt the pegasus tumbled to the right to force her straight and even onto his back. The world tilted forward and she fell towards the black rock, her hands left the bar that held inexperienced riders in a cagey saddle and found the pegasus's mane, and her legs found their way around the pegasus's shoulders and they tumbled down the valley with no control. When at last she she registered what her eyes were telling her, she pulled back so sharply upon the pegasus's mane that the beast squealed in pain. She did it.

But the long drop into the valley was no longer a drop. A white serpent had bloated between the mountains, ice thick and sparkling like crystal. It wound thousands of feet down the length of the valley, a monstrous dragon greedy for space and despair, jagged horns spiraling up and grabbing the light of the new-found sun where a service station had once been. Allison wiped her bloody hands on her black trousers and shot through the hollows of the Borderland Mountains, carrying a simple message for the Commander of the Lawliet.

The avalanche had landed on the road. This year's Lawliet had come to an end.

* * *

 **A/N:** **Thanks for reading!**


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